Q1. page 122.
What happened to the women and children? Cow keeping, collection of firewood, gleaning, gathering of fruits and berries from the common lands was earlier mostly done by women and children.
Can you suggest how enclosures must have affected the lives of women and children? Can you imagine how the disappearance of common lands might ‘have changed the relationship between men, women and children, within the family?

Ans. They became jobless. Their life became difficult. The lives of women and children must have been badly affected due to enclosures. They would have been displaced from the land. Their customary rights would have been snatched. Deprived of their rights and driven off the land, they would have been tramped in search of work.

Q2. page 123.
Read Sources C and D and answer the following:
• What is the peasant trying to say in source C?
• What is John Middleton arguing?
• Re-read from Section 1.1 to 1.4 and summarise the two sides of the argument for and against open fields. Which argument do you sympathise with?

Ans. • The peasant is trying to say that injustice is being done with the poor. The government should pass laws that must give redress. Laws should be made easily accessible to everyone including the poor.
• John Middleton is in favour of enclosures. He says that now everyone is bound to some rules. No one can make any changes in soil or prices. Everyone is equal. Everyone has to do his/her share of work.
• I sympathise with the argument for open fields. So long there were open fields, peasants had no problems. They used to pasture their cows and graze their sheep in the open land. For the poor, open land was essential for survival. But the system enclosuers filled their life with miseries.

Q3. page 134.
Imagine that you are the leader of a group of farmers protesting against having to grow opium. You have been granted a meeting with the local official of the East India Company. How would the conversation proceed? Divide the class into the two groups and act out the conversation you would have.